There was a rush and a bustle among the crowds in the distance.  Sunday-school session was over, and the great company were moving for seats for the morning service.  The boys took the alarm and fled, each glancing back to nod and smile at the bright apparition who had told them a story.  Flossy picked up her Bible; she had not needed to use it during this talk.  The story of Bethesda had burned itself so into her heart with that morning reading that she had no need to look at it again.  She gave a thoughtful little sigh.

“I don’t know about that being teaching,” she said within her heart, “but I certainly told them about Jesus, and I told them it was Jesus who had ‘made me whole.’  I made my own experience ‘witness’ for me to that degree.  If that is what they mean by teaching I like to do it.  I mean to go to Sunday-school just as soon as I get home, and if I find out that they just tell about things as they are in the Bible I can do it.  I can make the boys listen to me, I know.”

Bright little fairy that she was!  There was a new glow about her face.  She was waking to the thought that there was such a thing as power over people’s brains.  No danger but she will use her knowledge.  Let me tell you another thing that Chautauqua did for her.  It planted the seed that shall blossom into splendid teaching.  There was one teacher who gave many glances that morning to the little group around that old tree stump.  Mr. Roberts, from his point of observation, not far away, watched this scene from beginning to end.  It fascinated him.  He saw the timid beginning and the ever-increasing interest, until, when Flossy closed her Bible and arose, he turned his eyes from her with a quiet smile in them, and to himself he said:  “Unless I am very greatly mistaken she has found something that she can do.”

CHAPTER XX.

PEOPLE WHO, “HAVING EYES, SEE NOT.”

“Girls!” said Eurie, as she munched a doughnut, which she had brought from the lunch-table with her, and lounged on a camp-chair, waiting for the afternoon service, “do you know that Flossy taught a class in Sunday-school this morning?”

“Taught a class!” repeated both Marion and Ruth in one voice, and with about equal degrees of amazement.

“She did, as true as the world.  That is, she must have been teaching.  The way of it was this:  I went to see the little midgets exhibit themselves, and when I came out of the tent and walked over toward the stand, there sat Flossy on that old stump just back of the stand, and before her were two of the roughest-looking boys that ever emerged from the backwoods.  They were ragged and dirty and wild; and as wicked little imps as one could find, I am sure.  Flossy was talking to them, and she had a large Bible in her lap and one of those Lesson Leaves that they flutter about here so much; and—­well, altogether it was an amazing sight!  She was certainly talking to them with all her might, and they were listening; and it is my opinion that she was trying to play Sunday-school teacher, and give them a lesson.  You know she is an imitative little sheep, and always was.”